Wind power is recognized as a clean, quiet, feasible alternative electricity source around the world. When you think of wind power, what image comes to mind? A wide expanse of undeveloped land dotted with sleek, rotating turbines? What about rooftop turbines right in the city, similar in arrangement to solar rooftop panels?
The NYTimes.com published a […]

What is the International Space Station? How long has it been up there? Who goes up there and for how long? What do astronauts do on the space station? These are intriguing, valid questions you can pose to your students, or perhaps your students have already posed them to you. The NASA space exploration program […]

In middle school, students are progressing in their knowledge of what matter is, what it is made of, how it behaves and changes, and how it can be manipulated. These phenomena are the nature of chemistry. So why not use the term “chemistry” with students and celebrate National Chemistry Week? This year the American Chemical […]

Need an answer to your students’ question “Why do I need to take science? I’m not going to be a scientist!” On June 1, 2008, Brian Greene, physicist at Columbia University and author, wrote an op ed in the New York Times with your answer. Early in the two page article, he says
When we look […]

Middle school students are often intrigued by the excitement of exploration and the adventures of explorers, as their enthusiasm for Indiana Jones attests. Space exploration should be no exception. With new images now available from the Mars explorer, Phoenix, teachers can capitalize on student interest in exploration to meet some of the Earth and Space […]

Have you ever considered the irony of a gym full of people using electrically powered exercise machines to burn energy? What if the mechanical energy of those moving bodies could be converted into usable electric energy? That’s exactly what Arthur Kuo, a University of Michigan mechanical engineer, and his colleagues have done. Both News in […]

The irony of Greenland’s name has intrigued many of us, but according to a January 8, 2008, New York Times story, In Greenland, Ice and Instability, the irony may be short-lived. A series of unusually warm springs has increased the ice melt, and contributed to a cascade of related events. The melting ice is darker […]

A man is driving down a country road, when he spots a farmer standing in the middle of a huge field of grass. He pulls the car over to the side of the road and notices that the farmer is just standing there, doing nothing, looking at nothing. The man gets out of the car, […]